The Witch's Potions and the Jaguar's Paw Prints

Chapter 1

Chapter One

Evie

The first thing I notice as I’m pulling the pumpkin cinnamon rolls from the oven is the smell of burning sage and pure panic.

Not the good kind of panic. Not the productive we are fully booked through the season and pumpkin-spiced everything is flying off the shelves panic.

This is Aunt Ingrid, setting the front parlor curtains on fire while trying to scry for my future husband, kind of panic.

Just hopefully not the new curtains. Or the loveseat I picked up at the antique store. Or anything of value, for that matter. I have enough on my plate managing the bed-and-breakfast on my own while my sister is off studying abroad in Spain.

I shove through the swinging door from the kitchen, oven mitts still in hand, and nearly collide with a floating silver tray set with a steaming mug of tea and full tea service.

The tray jerks sideways, spilling a handful of sugar cubes that go bouncing along the antique rug that has survived three generations of witches and one very determined poltergeist.

“Ingrid!” I bark, slapping the oven mitts down on the back of the loveseat.

My middle-aged aunt, one of three triplets, spins around, smoke curling from the neatly wrapped curlers pinning her greying blonde hair to her head, a crystal ball clutched to her chest like a life raft. I glance beyond her, and the curtains are indeed smoldering.

A thin stream of water dribbles onto the floorboards, Aunt Astrid’s work, no doubt, judging by the guilty look on her face. It appears she’s doused the worst of it before the entire bed-and-breakfast can go up like a Samhain bonfire.

“I was this close,” Ingrid whispers, eyes wild. “The mist showed a man. Tall. Dark…” She gazes directly into my eyes. “Possibly furry.”

From his perch, my barn owl familiar, Nutmeg, emits a piercing screech and opens one eye to look at me, as if scolding me for my aunts’ wild, toddler-like antics.

As if they aren’t nearly three decades older than my thirty-two years.

As if they aren’t the ones supposed to be mentoring me.

I pinch the bridge of my nose and sigh.

“It’s halfway through October. The annual Pumpkin Festival starts in one week. Every room is booked. The apple orchard is already overrun with tourists who think ‘haunted hayride’ means they’ll actually get to interact with ghosts and have come to town early.”

They both open their mouths to speak, but I hold up a threatening finger and stare them down.

I’m at my wits’ end with their antics. The last thing I need this season is them trying to find me a date.

Wouldn’t surprise me if they try to conjure up a demon boyfriend next, given my luck and their desperation.

“And here the two of you are, acting like boisterous, unruly toddlers trying to summon my soulmate with a crystal ball the size of a grapefruit while the front desk has been ringing off the hook.”

The phone, as if summoned, lets out another shrill cry from the foyer.

Sigrid, the eldest and most sensible of the triplets, calls down the stairs.

“Tell whomever it is we’re full. And tell your two aunts to stop setting our mother’s curtains on fire. Some of us have standards.”

“But what about the family curse, Evie. You know—”

I pick up the mitts and point them at Ingrid.

“Crystal ball. Away. Now. Or I swear by the three faces of the goddess I will hex every single one of your romance novels so the heroes leave for sugar and never come back.”

She clutches the ball tighter than before, then, miraculously and with much exaggerated reluctance, sets it down on the side table with a pout. “You’re no fun when you’re stressed, Evie. If you had a man, or woman—”

“I’m the only one keeping this place from collapsing into a pile of haunted bricks and cinnamon-scented ash.

” I scoop up the fallen sugar cubes, muttering a quick cleanup charm that whisks the white crumbs and cubes into the air and floats them straight to the kitchen garbage before stalking to the front desk.

The phone is still ringing.

I snatch it up.

“Brews and Broomsticks Bed-and-Breakfast, this is Hawthorne. We’re fully booked through November first, but I can put you on the waitlist, and if someone cancels—”

A deep male voice cuts through the line, rough around the edges like he’s been awake too long. “That’s quite a name.”

His comment catches me off guard, and it takes a moment to rewire my brain enough to respond.

“Yes, it’s a family inside joke, but it fits the season and the town. And like I said, we’re booked.”

“I’m already in town. Name’s Liam Ironwood. I need a room. Tonight,” he continues, and this time I place the undertone of his voice as a deep mixture of New York and southern Ireland.

Something in my chest does a little flip.

Probably just indigestion from the three cups of coffee and zero breakfast I’ve had, and it’s now…

I glance at the grandfather clock in the foyer and internally groan.

Two in the afternoon already.

“Look, I’m sorry, Mr. Ironwood, but we really are full. The festival—”

“I’ll take a closet if that’s all you’ve got. Or the attic. Hell, I’ll even take the porch swing. I’m not picky.” He pauses, and I can practically feel the tension in him as he weighs what to share.

Call it empathic magic or the eldest daughter’s people-pleasing instinct, but something in the way he speaks tells me I’m going to give in no matter what he says next.

The truth is, I’m staying in the last room.

I moved all my stuff from my studio apartment to the bed-and-breakfast when my parents announced they were retiring and selling our old house.

My sister is off at college, my aunts have no business running the place, and I’ve been working here since I finished my degree at the local community college, never really finding where I fit or what I want in life.

Except for the obligation not to let the business fall into corporate hands or to someone who wouldn’t care about it the way I do. Even though the work isn’t always easy.

I could easily give up the room for a few nights or even a week and stay in the old servants’ quarters. We haven’t had live-in help in decades, but I’ve kept the room with the twin beds clean and fresh just in case.

“Mrs. Hawthorne?” The deep timbre of his voice pulls me from my wandering thoughts.

“Sorry, one of the guests came down with a question.” I glare at the triplets, who now stand clustered at the edge of the foyer like gossiping old hens, peering at me expectantly with eyebrows raised. “And it’s Miss Hawthorne. Evie Hawthorne.”

Why I feel the need not only to correct him but to give him my full name, I don’t know. Not that it matters.

“The truth is, I’m investigating a string of thefts, and I have reason to believe your town will be hit next. I have a contact at the local PD, Norman Sandford. He said your place would be my best bet in town for a vacancy that wasn’t… weird.”

“Norman Sandford said we weren’t… weird.”

I glance at the parlor, where Ingrid has wandered back and is now attempting to levitate the crystal ball while water continues to drip onto the hardwood floor.

Weird is relative in Pumpkin Hollow.

Still, something in the way he says it—tired, determined, and a little desperate—makes me hesitate. The universe has a nasty habit of dropping people, complications, or complicated people, on my doorstep right when I least need them.

It definitely isn’t the family curse.

It’s a fable that the Hawthornes are destined to have bad luck running the B&B until they find their mate. My parents were just lucky and good at business, something they instilled in my sister and me.

My aunts? I glance at the three of them. Sigrid is poking at the soaking curtains and attempting a drying spell while the other two hunch over the floating crystal orb.

They’ve just had a string of bad relationships and bad luck, one after the other, and were more than happy when my mother and her mate decided to take on the mantle of running the place.

Just as I have.

I exhale, twisting the phone’s old cord around my finger. “There might be… one option. But I have to warn you. It’s at the end of the house, over the kitchen, and the heating is temperamental after midnight.”

“I’ll take it.”

“You haven’t even seen it or asked the price.”

“Doesn’t matter.” Another pause, longer this time. “I’ll be there in twenty.”

The line goes dead.

I stare at the receiver for a second, then hang it up slowly. Outside the front windows, the first orange leaves of October swirl past the porch lanterns. Somewhere in the distance, the old church bell tolls the hour, and the whole town seems to lean in closer, waiting.

Behind me, Ingrid lets out a delighted gasp, followed by a whoop from Astrid.

I turn just in time to see Astrid holding the parlor phone to her ear, her lips pulled back into a grin wide enough to give the Cheshire Cat a run for his money.

“Tall. Dark,” Ingrid whispers to the crystal ball. “And coming in twenty minutes.”

That’s it. First thing in the morning, I’m paying to upgrade the phones and get rid of the old shared landlines.

“Don’t,” I warn, but the three old ladies only smile wider.

“Oh, darling niece, the cards have been screaming about this for weeks. You might as well start practicing your vows.”

“And find something nicer to wear. You’re covered in flour, and your hair is a rat’s nest on top of your head,” Sigrid chimes in.

I groan, grab the spare key to the room I’ve claimed as mine, and head upstairs to clear out my belongings.

Thankfully, I haven’t started unpacking, and most of my stuff is still in the attic.

I have less than twenty minutes to throw all my knickknacks, toiletries, and books into a box and take them to the servants’ quarters, which are conveniently just down the stairs.

I intentionally chose this room for its easy access to the kitchen and parlor, bypassing the other guest rooms and main hallway.

When I reach the room at the end of the floor, I unlatch the window, and the familiar, blessed scent of woodsmoke and pine drifts in from the festival preparations, mingling with the scent of impending disaster inside.

For the first time all season, I’m not entirely sure which one I’m walking toward.